If you read the Wikipedia page about the book you'll see Russia-Georgia listed as 1 of 5 such counter-examples, going back to the US invasion of Panama in 1989.
You'll also see his responses.
But I'm not trying to justify either which way. My point is that there are certain concepts in geopolitical dialog that are used as short-hand to express a larger concept. Expressions like "McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas" are to outsiders as meaningless as "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" or "information wants to be free".
In other words "[Schmidt] struggled to verbalize many of [his politics], often shoehorning geopolitical subtleties into Silicon Valley marketese or the ossified State Department micro-language of his companions" can be turned around - Assage uses a different language than you or I, though he doesn't struggle to verbalize his politics.
You'll also see his responses.
But I'm not trying to justify either which way. My point is that there are certain concepts in geopolitical dialog that are used as short-hand to express a larger concept. Expressions like "McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas" are to outsiders as meaningless as "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" or "information wants to be free".
In other words "[Schmidt] struggled to verbalize many of [his politics], often shoehorning geopolitical subtleties into Silicon Valley marketese or the ossified State Department micro-language of his companions" can be turned around - Assage uses a different language than you or I, though he doesn't struggle to verbalize his politics.